spotlight

Lower the Sugar on Your Label

It’s common to walk through the grocery store and see people studying labels on products. What are they looking at? Many look at the Nutrition Facts Panel, comparing different levels of fats, calories, sodium and sugars.

How can a food manufacturer make their label more appealing to the potential consumer? One way may be to decrease the amount of sugars on the label. However, decreasing the amount of sugar or creating new products that are low sugar or sugar free can leave formulators with a challenge. MALTRIN® maltodextrins may be the answer.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines maltodextrins as non-sweet, nutritive saccharide polymers. While maltodextrins consist of glucose chains, only chains that have two or less glucose molecules contribute to sugar labels on the nutrition facts panel. Therefore maltodextrins can be used in sugar-free and no-sugar-added applications, given that the level of DP1 and DP2 molecules stay below one-half gram.

One approach to lowering the amount of sugar is to reduce the amount of sugar in the formulation and add high intensity sweeteners. With the decrease of ingredients such as granulated sugar or dextrose, the formulator will need to add something back in to the replace solids. MALTRIN® maltodextrin helps replace solids and offers other functional advantages as well. They are instantly soluble in water, have very clean flavor and color and have low hygroscopicity.

In dry mix applications, the reduction or elimination of sugar leads to less volume. Here, MALTRIN® maltodextrins contribute bulk that will add volume back to the package. In addition to creating bulk and building solids, MALTRIN® maltodextrins also enhance body and mouthfeel.

GPC is committed to finding effective solutions for your product development challenges. Please contact Technical Service if you have questions or would like to request specific formulations.